Here’s a legal fight that could have broad implications.
The Supreme Court refused Monday to shield the news media from being sued for accurately reporting a politician’s false charges against a rival.
Instead, the justices let stand a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that a newspaper can be forced to pay damages for having reported that a city councilman called the mayor and the council president “liars,” “queers” and “child molesters.”
In this case, a newspaper published libelous charges levied at a local public official. The newspaper didn’t come up with the charges, but rather, attributed them to a rival official, who made the attack in public. Readers weren’t told that the chargers were inaccurate, only that they were made. It’s the typical “he said, he said” that’s become a mainstay of modern political journalism.
The press said the falsehoods were protected by a “neutral reporting privilege,” though most judges apparently believe such a privilege does not fall under the First Amendment and yesterday’s announcement puts the very idea of the privilege in permanent jeopardy.
[T]he Pennsylvania Supreme Court said the press has never “enjoyed a blanket immunity” from being sued over stories that print falsehoods that damage a person’s reputation. The law “has placed a burden (albeit a minimal one) on the media to refrain from publishing reports that they know to be false,” the Pennsylvania court said.
So here’s what I’m thinking: Countless lazy media outlets repeated the Swiftboat Liars’ claims last year, usually without making any effort to tell the public that that their smear had no basis in fact. With this and the Pennsylvania case in mind, there are a few hundred reporters out there who should probably call their lawyers.
Because if reporters have effectively lost their “license to knowingly publish defamatory falsehoods,” so long as the attacks are attributed to someone else, then I can think of an entire political press corps that has some explaining to do.